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 Kanluwen wrote:
It's a weird complaint to be honest, as when I think "static defenses"?

I don't think Marines.

Tarantulas are specifically automated to do the static defense part so the Marines don't have to. Besides, they are cool bits of kit that can also be used by pretty much every other Imperial faction. Could even put it in the Agents book.

Tarantula's machine spirits are about as good shots as Land Raider ones, right? So why would LR's be a venerated tech while tarantulas would be considered too A.I.?

IMHO a Tarantula is a neat tool in the Astartes' (feel free to replace with keyword <IMPERIUM> ) arsenal. You can temporarily fortify areas, which could be useful in many types of extraction/escort missions for example. Or for setting up crossfire points in advance in order to defend a particular position. You can't always rely on a drop to reach its target, or one to be able to be made.

"Give one Marine three Tarantulas, and he will control a position for days.."

I'm interested in the rumored end of Toughness, at least for infantry. I've actually always thought that Strength vs Toughness and AP vs Armor Save are redundant.
I think they could keep/combine one of those two systems so that most units only have two rolls, the hit and wound, and then only the big boys get their FNP roll.

Edit: Actually what I think makes most sense is bringing Initiative back for BS vs I, tossing SvT, and keeping the Saving throw modified by AP.
Edit 2: I got post# 666 below... does Tzeentch approve?

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's a weird complaint to be honest, as when I think "static defenses"?

I don't think Marines.

I think Sentry Guns spattering bugs while wiggling like nodding dogs like they are enjoying it (the guns, not the bugs, I think they enjoy it less but with bugs who knows?)

on the combining of toughness and armour..

works fine in LotR, Strength v "Defence" which is basically toughness, modified by armour, makes sense, armour make you tougher, just needs the "to wound chart" to see the "always wound on a 6+" vanish and be the same as LotR with 6, then 6/4+, then 6/5+, then 6/6 then "-"

 kingpbjames wrote:
I'm interested in the rumored end of Toughness, at least for infantry. I've actually always thought that Strength vs Toughness and AP vs Armor Save are redundant.
I think they could keep/combine one of those two systems so that most units only have two rolls, the hit and wound, and then only the big boys get their FNP roll.

Edit: Actually what I think makes most sense is bringing Initiative back for BS vs I, tossing SvT, and keeping the Saving throw modified by AP.

Personally I think the whole 'getting rid of toughness' is bunk, but they DID do it to Age of Sigmar and it works surprisingly well.
The major thing they did there is make it so that weapons wound on a flat roll, no strength vs toughness to worry about.

HOWEVER, one of the major reasons it works in AoS is because DAMAGE SPILLS OVER. A bunch of skeletons can threaten a gargant because they wound on 4's and can bring it down through many stabbings of spears. That gargant, however, is not limited to stomping on one skeleton at a time, the damage it does will sweep across many skeletons. Thematically, this makes sense, like a cannon ball rolling through multiple units, or a breath attack immolating several ranks of infantry.

In 40k, you have some weapons that are typically viewed as single-target, like lascannons and melta guns. One shot from a lascannon or rail gun can do massive damage to a tank, but when targetting infantry it's unlikely to line up several infantry models and murder them all. It's POSSIBLE, but unlikely.

There are solutions to this issue, such as making it so that single-shot weapons don't let their damage spill over, while other weapons like heavy bolters (damage 2 but bolter shots are known for exploding after impact) and plasma (so hot it can melt things nearby) could do spill-over damage and take out multiple models.

Depending on your perspective, this could add unneeded complexity, or could add a layer of strategy and choice in weapons, instead of defaulting for one weapon all the time, as has been the case in many editions in 40k.

I think it could work if damage spilled over if it was Blast or in melee. Then it makes sense.

Well, I thought 40k's system worked alright since its wounds that spill over in units. That way frag grenades could spread a lot of light damage with sniper rifles devastating a single model. Most of the time you're targeting a unit of 5+ infantry or a large single model.

In any case I'm hoping 10th ed does something similar to what leopard said about LOTR's strength vs defense roll. Toughness and Armor Save are redundant. Just need to combine Strength and AP.

Looking forward to 10th ed! Totally regret buying 9th ed rulebook but at least I stopped at two codexes.

Just make it so all damage spills over and a given attack can never inflict more damage than the target's Wounds characteristic. Easy, intuitive, best of both worlds.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Just make it so all damage spills over and a given attack can never inflict more damage than the target's Wounds characteristic. Easy, intuitive, best of both worlds.

Not sure if I understand what you mean by this.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 10 models with Wounds characteristic of 1: deals 1 damage total, killing 1 model.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 3 models with a Wounds characteristic of 4: deals 4 damage total, killing 1 model.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 3 models with a Wounds characteristic of 4, where 1 model has already taken 2 damage: deals 4 damage total, killing 1 model and damaging a second.

Is that right?

 Rihgu wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Just make it so all damage spills over and a given attack can never inflict more damage than the target's Wounds characteristic. Easy, intuitive, best of both worlds.

Not sure if I understand what you mean by this.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 10 models with Wounds characteristic of 1: deals 1 damage total, killing 1 model.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 3 models with a Wounds characteristic of 4: deals 4 damage total, killing 1 model.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 3 models with a Wounds characteristic of 4, where 1 model has already taken 2 damage: deals 4 damage total, killing 1 model and damaging a second.

Is that right?

I'm confused what this is meant to emulate, in-universe.

Man, all this talk when we already had a far more intuitive solution. Templates. Yes they were hard to perfectly balance and someone particularly pedantic can argue edge cases, but it was far, far more intuitive as far as 40k is concerned.

that's just it, the more exceptions you make, the more exclusions or other weirdness and you run into issues of rules bloat and also messiness with keeping as true as you can to whatever the lore happens to be.

But, we'll see what happens. I think we'll be sticking with toughness an strength for another edition regardless.

GW knows they need to make it more approachable for more people, but they dont' want to scare the fanbase they have built off completely. The reactions when they got rid of Initiative for 8th edition were bad enough, and now people are more plugged in than ever before since that time.

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:
Man, all this talk when we already had a far more intuitive solution. Templates. Yes they were hard to perfectly balance and someone particularly pedantic can argue edge cases, but it was far, far more intuitive as far as 40k is concerned.

What do templates have to do with damage spill-over?

A Proposed Rule I might've never posted for Damage Spill-Over is that, when you deal excess damage, any excess is divided by two (rounding down, minimum 0) then applied to the next model in a unit. Keep going until everyone is dead or damage runs out.

So, against a squad of W1 guys, D1 and D2 kills one. D3-6 kills two. D7+ would kill three. (Technically you can kill a fourth with a D15+, but nothing actually has that to my knowledge.)
Against W2 models, D2 and D3 kills one. D4-D5 kills one, wounds another. D6-D9 kills two. D10+ kills two, wounds a a third.

The calculations are more complicated than I'd like, but I think it hits a good sweet spot between "A Lascannon is USELESS against hordes" and "A Lascannon is better than a Frag Missile against hordes".

drbored wrote:
... The reactions when they got rid of Initiative for 8th edition were bad enough, and now people are more plugged in than ever before since that time.

Removal of Initative and WS vs WS checks in melee removed two massive defensive layers that allowed for more variety of unit representation.
Why should two equally matched warriors hit eachother on 3s instead of 4s?
Why shouldn't a nimble space elf have bad armor and toughness, but their high ws affords them evasion?
All the removal of I and ws vs ws check has lead to is more and more invul saves to represent everything.

 Kanluwen wrote:
It's a weird complaint to be honest, as when I think "static defenses"?

I don't think Marines.

Tarantulas are just scaled up versions of the sentry guns in Aliens. Portable automated guns, while Firestrikes are slightly larger with grav plates to haul around, and the bunker is an upscaled deathstorm drop pod

More rumours. Found these on a drukhari discord but they didn't originate there. I have no link to the original poster.

 Rihgu wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Just make it so all damage spills over and a given attack can never inflict more damage than the target's Wounds characteristic. Easy, intuitive, best of both worlds.

Not sure if I understand what you mean by this.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 10 models with Wounds characteristic of 1: deals 1 damage total, killing 1 model.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 3 models with a Wounds characteristic of 4: deals 4 damage total, killing 1 model.

Attack that deals 6 damage into a unit of 3 models with a Wounds characteristic of 4, where 1 model has already taken 2 damage: deals 4 damage total, killing 1 model and damaging a second.

Is that right?

Precisely. Though those examples aren't really where the benefit would be felt. See, right now we have...

*Marine fails save*
D3 damage rolls 1
*Marine fails save*
D3 damage rolls 3! but doesn't matter it just kills the wounded marine
*Marine fails save*
D3 damage rolls...

And so on. Personally I feel it is needlessly convoluted compared to...
*Marines roll 10 saves, fail 3 of them*
3D3 damage rolls get 1, 2, and 3
The 3 is reduced to 2 because that is the target unit's Wounds characteristic
Unit takes 5 damage

Removing initative and weapon skill was the best change they made into 8th. It quite frankly made it pointless to ever charge with certain units and armies. Giving the first strike to the charging unit actually made players make some additional decisions that had an impact on the game.

Leggy wrote:
More rumours. Found these on a drukhari discord but they didn't originate there. I have no link to the original poster.

If this turns out to be true I'd be pretty happy with it. I'm really not a fan of all the strategems and needless complexity of the game.

question is not how the index looks like but how long GW will keep the "no bloat" design

About the length of index until first codex. Bloat is not a bug but feature for GW.

Leggy wrote:
More rumours. Found these on a drukhari discord but they didn't originate there. I have no link to the original poster.

Nah, they're casually breaking a legal.contract and inviting litigation publicly and all they drop in "revenge" the loosest information of a few bullet points? Someone out for a little fake Internet attention I think.

Or want to have all external playtesting eliminated for good. Because if the playtesters really leak then that's where it will end up with.

Being loose btw would reduce odds of being tracked on who you were since odds of leaking leak trap part reduces. The more complete leak you put the more likely you leak what allows you to be traced.

tneva82 wrote:
Or want to have all external playtesting eliminated for good. Because if the playtesters really leak then that's where it will end up with.

Being loose btw would reduce odds of being tracked on who you were since odds of leaking leak trap part reduces. The more complete leak you put the more likely you leak what allows you to be traced.

I know but if they're open screwing with GW as they word it, you'd need a burner account first of all and if you're that butthurt, you'd do worse than they did.

It just screams made up attention seeking.

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Or want to have all external playtesting eliminated for good. Because if the playtesters really leak then that's where it will end up with.

Being loose btw would reduce odds of being tracked on who you were since odds of leaking leak trap part reduces. The more complete leak you put the more likely you leak what allows you to be traced.

I know but if they're open screwing with GW as they word it, you'd need a burner account first of all and if you're that butthurt, you'd do worse than they did.

It just screams made up attention seeking.

Who says it wasn't burner account? Note that the picture wasn't from original source and that's assuming Norbie is even recognizable person and not just random nickname...And of coourse Norbie isn't who leaked these if they are real leaks.

We don't know if the leaker is burner account because we haven't even see account that leaked

Dudeface wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Or want to have all external playtesting eliminated for good. Because if the playtesters really leak then that's where it will end up with.

Being loose btw would reduce odds of being tracked on who you were since odds of leaking leak trap part reduces. The more complete leak you put the more likely you leak what allows you to be traced.

I know but if they're open screwing with GW as they word it, you'd need a burner account first of all and if you're that butthurt, you'd do worse than they did.

It just screams made up attention seeking.

I have added these rumours to the OP.

IMHO it looks like someone is making the rounds on various platforms and spreading inventend rumours using the just-so story of a 'pissed-off playtester': nobody can easily prove them wrong, and due to the fact that someone with real material from playtesting would use burner accounts and obscure outlets as well there's not much you can say against that...

Keep in mind that trolls went as far as compiling fake multiple-dozen page rulesets with art and everything in the past just for their enjoyment

Tsagualsa wrote:
Keep in mind that trolls went as far as compiling fake multiple-dozen page rulesets with art and everything in the past just for their enjoyment

Pancake edition?

 Vovin wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:
Keep in mind that trolls went as far as compiling fake multiple-dozen page rulesets with art and everything in the past just for their enjoyment

Pancake edition?

Iirc it was back in 6th edition or something like that, i distinctly remember Blood Angel Bat riders and stuff like that

Tittliewinks22 wrote:

Removal of Initative and WS vs WS checks in melee removed two massive defensive layers that allowed for more variety of unit representation.

Interminable dice rolling was one of the things that put me off 40K. It happened when I played games with simpler, cleaner rules that initially seemed to lack 'character' but turned out more streamlined and enjoyable. The bigger your game gets, the less need there should be to play out every stage of every individual duel.

I've even heard 40K's several layers of dice rolling before you can land a wound, described as a buffer to spare the feelings of kids who hadn't yet figured out how to play tactically. I don't think it's the full truth but the idea has an appeal.

I don't know if half of the rules slimming rumours are true, and if it'll discourage kids who just want to bash their heckin' grimdark space mariens together. I do know it's making me want to check out 40K rules after I dunno how long. It's a very odd feeling.

Dudeface wrote:
I know but if they're open screwing with GW as they word it, you'd need a burner account first of all and if you're that butthurt, you'd do worse than they did.

It just screams made up attention seeking.

I don't know entirely about made up because it clearly could be true. But equally its all stuff I'd kind of assume would happen based on the other rumours.

You kind of think if they wanted to screw over GW they'd give us something a bit more material. Like Marine/Tyranid stat line. But maybe despite "breaking their NDA" they still want to try and hide and fear being caught out.